I'm a geochemist. In the past ten years I've fixed mass spectrometers, blasted sapphires with a laser beam, explored for uranium in a nature reserve, and measured growth patterns in fish ears, and helped design the next generation of the world's most advanced ion probe. My main interest is in-situ mass spectrometry, but I have a soft spot in my heart for thermodynamics, drillers, and cosmochemistry.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Here in Australia, the new Coalition
government, which won office in 2013 on a head-in-the-sand approach to climate
change, is busy dismantling all of the federal early warning and advisory
bodies on climate. There are snide gloating remarks floating around the
internet to the effect that the climate scientists have been exposed, and that
the conservatives need to cut the dole before these fake scientists can get any
more government money. The election of Donald Trump to the American presidency
in 2016 has generated similar chatter on their side of the internet. However,
these ungracious comments also suffer from factual deficits. There are no
climate scientists; there are only scientists who study climate.

Most of
these scientists are Earth scientists. However, a substantial and growing
proportion of them are also physicists, astronomers, mathematicians,
meteorologists, and other physical scientists. The type of scientist generally
describes how they attack scientific problems, not which problems they attack.

A person who has mastered the physical
and chemical tools that allow us to understand the Earth system can apply those
tools to whatever knowledge suits their fancy. I know el Niño experts who
started out on gold mines, and frackers who started out studying el Niño.
I know isotope specialists and paleontologists who have applied their skills to
both ocean heat uptake and oil & gas exploration. Even Tim Flannery,
the recently sacked chief of the climate commission, had a previous career in
vertebrate paleontology.

So you don’t need to worry- or
gloat- that the end of climate funding will mean these climate scientists will
have nowhere else to go. Sure, they will be disruptions, but the same
skills that make them good at climate will let them pursue other Earth Science
goals, or other careers that value the ability to constrain complex systems
with limited and unusual data. Many of these folks may even stay in
climate, generating predictions that inform insurance companies who to raise rates
on, or hedge funds who to divest out of. In fact, they might even end up better
off.

There is an oft repeated criticism of climate researchers
that they are only in it for the money. But nothing could be further from the
truth.Most recipients of university and
advanced degrees in physical science are able to pull down significant
salaries, because people who have these skills can solve a wide variety of
important and lucrative problems. It is hard to say exactly how much a climate
scientists is underpaid by, since academic career tracks are notoriously
fickle, and comparative industry tracks often have share options, bonuses,
profit sharing, or other financial inducements which can be difficult to predict.
But by applying a broad uncertainty envelope, I think it is safe to say that from
the moment a geologist finishes their undergraduate university degree, choosing
a career in climate research rather than energy or mineral resource extraction
generally results in a lifetime earnings deficit of somewhere between one and five
million dollars. So climate researchers are not fattening up at the research
funding trough. They are quite literally sacrificing a fortune to determine
what kind or world we will be leaving our children.

What this means is that the recent
shuttering of government climate organizations will not mean the end of climate
scientists, or even of climate science. It simply means that Australians- and now possibly Americans-
as a whole will no longer be the beneficiaries of their immense talents. Even
if you, the reader, don’t have a job, these scientists will. It’s just that
they won’t be working for you- or the rest of the public-anymore; they’ll be working for someone much
richer than you are, who probably doesn’t share your interests or values.

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Disclaimer:

All opinions, measurements, figures, and facts on this page are the personal opinions of Charles W. Magee, Jr, and do not represent the views of any of his employers: past, present, present-but-about-to-be-past, or future. None of the content herein has been subject to peer review, and should be treated with caution or derision. Any passing mention of OSHA code violations, criminal activities, unethical or unscientific behavior, or the clandestine Australian nuclear weapons program are fictions created to make rhetorical points, and do not represent the reality of my, or anyone else's, workplace. Do not attempt any scientific protocols described herein at home, with the exception of the chocolate chip cookie recipe. Do not apply the products of that protocol to individuals with heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or cholesterol, egg, wheat, dairy, or chocolate allergies. Do not view this blog continuously for more than 45 minutes without stretching and taking other precautions to prevent computer-related chronic injury.

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